You’ll Soon Be Able to Purchase Madam CJ Walker’s Hair Care Products

Madam CJ Walker is most known for being the first American female self-made millionaire, but is often left out of the conversation when discussing iconic women in the beauty industry.

Walker began her beauty business in 1905 and the people at Sundial, which own SheaMoisture and Nubian Heritage, want to revive her products and legacy.

The product line will be called Madam C.J. Walker Beauty Culture and will be available March 4 at Sephora. The four-piece collection will feature blowout creams and deep conditioners and will be for all hair types whether straight, curly, coily or wavy. 21st century modern ingredients will be used such as coconut and Jamaican black-castor oils, which help you achieve healthy hair.

Sundial CEO Richelieu Dennis said of this venture to Refinery29, “We want to tell the broader story; we don’t want this to just be a ‘Hey, she had a company and she was successful.’ It was what she did, how she did it, how she impacted a world that didn’t pay any attention to women that looked like her.”

Dennis went on to say, “We want to make sure that the world also knows how she impacted the culture of beauty, how she helped women of color not just around beauty but around confidence, around economic empowerment.”

According to Dennis, rebuilding Walker’s brand took about a decade to bring to fruition.

“It took us so long to really wrap this together and figure out exactly what would be the most impactful way to bring her legacy back to the forefront,”he said.

It should be noted Walker’s great-great granddaughter, A’Leila Bundles, who serves as her official historian and biographer, will be working with Sundial to make sure the product’s values and principles stay true to Walker’s aesthetic.

“I was so excited because [Dennis and his team] have been so successful, and I could see that they had the capacity to really re-imagine Madam Walker’s brand — to keep the philosophy of empowering women, of helping women discover their own beauty, and also the idea of community commerce,” said Bundles.

Dennis hopes the Sephora partnership will expand Walker’s impact on the beauty industry.

“There’s no reason why people shouldn’t think of Madam C.J. Walker the same way they think of Coco Chanel. It’s been all too easy to marginalize us over the decades, and it’s time for us to stand up and say ‘Hey, no, I won’t be marginalized,’ and this is what we did and we’re going to make sure everybody knows that — through all lenses.”